This invention relates to an operatively carried rotatable discharge conveyor for discharging bulk material from a belly-dump trailer, and more particularly to a rotatable material feed joint for rotatably supporting such a conveyor in cantilever fashion operatively to receive material from the trailer and selectively discharge such material in any of a plurality of alternative directions with respect to the trailer.
Conventional "belly-dump" trailers for transport of bulk material such as pea gravel, sand or grain typically have at least one funnel-shaped material hopper with a lower discharge port located between the front of the trailer and the rear wheels. Such a trailer may dump the whole load into a sub-surface bin or, by moving the trailer while dumping, may deposit the load of bulk material in an elongate windrow which passes between the rear wheels of the trailer. Since the trailer is only capable of dumping immediately beneath itself, if the vehicle and trailer are unable to be positioned immediately over the desired discharge area, the discharged material must be handled again to move it to the desired location. Another limitation of this type of trailer is that a point discharge of the entire load of the bulk material is impractical because the rear wheels of the trailer must be able to pass over or to either side of the discharged load.
Prior art vehicles such as Swisher, U.S. Pat. No. 3,917,084 have attempted to overcome some of these limitations by providing a belly-dump trailer with a conveyor to carry the material from the bottom of the material hopper to a discharge position behind the rear wheels of the trailer so that the rear wheels of the trailer do not have to pass over or around the discharged load. Such a trailer is still limited in that it must be able to straddle or back up to the desired discharge location, and could not, for example, deposit the load into a ditch off to the side of the trailer.
Mendez, U.S. Pat. No. 2,757,808 provides a side unloading capability to belly-dump trailers by means of a detachable conveyor which may be operatively mounted beneath the hopper and supported by a rotatable boom mounted on one side of the trailer to discharge material to that side of the trailer. Once the conveyor is operatively connected to the bottom of the hopper, the conveyor may be rotated about a generally horizontal axis by the supporting boom for discharging to a point which is vertically above a horizontal plane passing through the bottom of the hopper. The conveyor of Mendez is limited to discharging only to one side of the trailer and only in a direction perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the trailer. It must also be attached and detached from the hopper and swung between its operative position and its unoperative carrying position by the operator before and after unloading.